


Once upon a Time - or Three sides of Carol Peletier

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Domestic Violence, Gen, spoilers for season three at large
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 05:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Excuses, she thinks, is all people are in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once upon a Time - or Three sides of Carol Peletier

**Author's Note:**

> There are references to various episodes - including some dialogue from the deleted scenes from season two (notably the first segment, which is worth watching in its own right - check out youtube if you want to find it) - and various viewpoints regarding domestic violence, some of which will be distasteful. The statistics regarding marital abuse in America - as mentioned in this fic - are disturbingly accurate.

THE PRETTY:

 

Sophia found the article in an old, water-logged, copy of Cosmopolitan – the front cover adorned with pictures of flowing locks, artful air gusts, and models who were no more than teenagers.  The majority of models employed by ad corporations began their career from age fifteen, and Carol’s cynical enough to think it’s not the image of _women_ magazines exalt – celebrate  – but the body type common to _adolescence_. 

Prior to Ed, before marriage, Carol studied art at university.  If anything shines a light on the changing nature of what’s deemed attractive then it’s illuminated in the paintings of old, the Botticelli’s, the Vermeer’s, the face of women, their experiences and their curves, their mysterious half smiles found in oil and marble and resonating back through time. In comparison, modern media sexualises the _child_ \- by American law not deemed an adult until twenty-one - their teenage bodies coltish, flat, and forever changing.  Ed lounges half in, half out of the family tent.  He smiles at Amy when she passes by, teeth stained as he spits his tobacco onto the dirt, beer gut rolling over his low hanging pants.  That’s men for you, Carol thinks tiredly, skeevy molesters the lot of them, throwing over partners their own age with similar experiences, to chase babes.  Their choice of vernacular, too - _hey baby_ – and ain’t that the literal truth?

“Why don’t you grow your hair long?” Sophia asks. 

Her voice is small, so not to attract Ed’s attention.  Sophia picks at the loose strands on her teddy bear, plucking the stuffing out half-heartedly.  The article states males prefer women with long hair.  Sophia had preened when she saw that part and Carol had laughed, untangling the knots, running a comb through Sophia’s tresses. 

Carol had cut her own hair two months after marrying Ed - she keeps it close to the skull - providing no leverage for his fits of rage.  Post-civilisation, it keeps the lice out, and ensures no Walker can yank her backward by her locks, something Lori found out the hard way.  Both points tally up as pluses in Carol’s book.

She reads the headline over her daughter’s shoulder dismissively, written in sparkly pink and capital letters. Ninety-two per cent of males think women with longer hair are more attractive!  It’s probably true – and also, Carol thinks fuck ‘em -  the statistics and those men with their ready-made dyke jokes.  Carol thinks if they can’t be bothered getting to know her - who Carol is, _her_ values, _her_ thoughts – then those men are not worth knowing to begin with.  It’s their loss.  Carol keeps her hair short, her face naked, because it’s who she is.

“I think it suits me.  Don’t you?”

Sophia nods shyly.  “I do… But I want my hair to be long as Rapunzel when I grow up.”

“Then you should.  We might need a rope or two to save us before this is over.”

Sophia doesn’t smile, she rarely does, but she squirms closer, moves into Carol’s warmth, dirt-stained knees and an old copy of Cosmopolitan clutched in her hand.  When she grows up, her hair is gong to be long as a fairytale.

On the other side of the camp, Carl talks to his dad.  He’s watched over carefully by Lori, doted on by Shane, guarded by Rick, all three adults bent on doing their best by him, whereas Ed doesn’t look toward his own child, not even once.  Carol rocks her daughter gently, head tilted toward the fire.  “I love you, love you so very much.”

 

 

 

 

THE UGLY:

 

The truth is – Carol doesn’t like Rick – and the dislike is there even before Sophia disappears.  There’s a litany of words she’s said against him. 

_Is this the truth?  Or are you **lying** to us like you did before?_

_Why didn’t you go back?  This is **you** r fault.  How could you leave her out there alone?_

_Why don’t you **do** something?_

_I don’t trust him…_

On the side of the road, after the farm was over-run, Daryl had stared at her, perplexed, his voice rough because of it:  “What do you want?”

“A man of honour.”

Daryl’s expression shifted, in the half dwindling light, he looked near contemptuous. 

She doesn’t like Rick to begin with because he’s police and Carol’s a battered wife – and she’s played that two-step waltz with the law for almost twenty years.  _Please help me,_ and when the police knocked down the door and dragged Ed away, ready to press charges, when she had time to think, when the bruises faded and Carol wondered about the financial repayments, how she would survive without her husband, who would help raise Sophia, when the terror eased and a different fear rose - when lastly and _finally_ \- Carol decided Ed was drunk and never meant to hurt her – she dropped all charges against him. 

Until the next time when Carol called the police – and unlike before, the police weren’t so keen to respond, slower to arrive, looked at Carol tiredly, with a thousand other domestics behind them.  _Sure you wanna go ahead?  Or are you wasting my evening?_ And how _dare_ they say that – when the house was smashed to pieces and her bones were fractured?Carol’s a battered wife, and like most battered wives who never leave the abuse, she fucking _hates_ the police.  Because it’s there _job_ to help, and they don’t get to check out on the oaths they made at the Academy because of repetitive action.  They don’t get to roll their eyes behind her back and sneer. 

She’s distrustful of Rick almost on sight.  

It’s an engrained prejudice against him, it’s twenty years of marriage and domestic violence, of the police rotating through her front door – it’s not that dissimilar to what Merle or Daryl feels - Carol sees the uniform first and, just like her husband, hates everything it represents.  Shane would have told a different story – would have said she was a stupid fucking bitch for not leaving Ed to begin with – but Carol never hated Shane with the same intensity she did Rick.  Shane never pretended to be anything _other_ than an asshole.  Oddly enough, Carol doesn’t trust Rick until the moment he turns the corner, loses some of the consideration that had driven him in the past.  Until he takes control of their little group and rules it with an iron fist – deciding where they’ll go, where they’ll sleep, which houses they will hit, and where they’ll shit.  Carol doesn’t trust Rick until the third year of their acquaintance…she’s changing, she is, but some patterned behaviour is harder to overcome than others.

Ironically, Carol’s not even aware of it – how she only relaxes around Rick when he loses the edge of softness. 

Someone once said there are two sides to any story – that’s a fallacy – there are as many sides to a story as there are people watching it unfold, and they bring with them their own history, prejudices, and hopes.  They turn that story inside out, turn it around like a pretzel, a choose-your-own adventure game, they find the parts that are relevant to _them_ and overlook the miniature, the alien, or the aspects that rub them wrong.

She thinks if it were Shane who rotated through her front door in uniform, when the world was still civilised (and she uses that term loosely) then Carol might have told him something like this:   

_I loved Ed, it’s hard to believe but I did, there was no show of violence until much later in our marriage…when Ed lost his job and the money became tight.  I could make Ed laugh.   I could make him rage.   I knew I had every inch of his attention, that everything he had, everything he felt, was directed at me, the good and the bad.  That’s heady…and impossible to explain.  But they were mine.  Until he hit too hard, and I panicked and called the police.  People deserve second chances, if you love them - no matter the bruises they leave behind - they deserve more than a second looking…and so I dropped the charges.  Except Ed didn’t laugh so easily any more, and the good times, they were wearing thin._

_The third time he attacked me, I was ready to leave.  Except the police, who came so quickly the first time I called, they were sitting on the porch step with Ed, talking about baseball, shooting the breeze until he relaxed and calmed down, and then they upped and walked away._

_He’s threatened to kill me,_ Carol would say, when Sophia was a one year old.  _Oh god, he’s threatened to kill me._

 _There are shelters_ , they’d answer blandly, and hand over a phone-number on a nondescript card.  _One of our deputies can give you a ride, have social services check in on you once a fortnight._

_And if he finds us first?_

_We can’t press charges unless he does something._   He’ll look at her steadily, scanning her face and wrist, looking for overt bruises, except Ed doesn’t leave visible marks behind any more.  He’s learned from this three-ringed circus, too

 _Like his last threat?_    She’ll say, disbelievingly.  _You can’t do anything until I’m dead?  What fucking use are you people?_

 _We’re not psychics,_ he’ll snap, _and there’s not a person on earth who hasn’t wished someone ill, whether they intended to carry through or not, so let me say this clear and let me say it plainly…we can’t do a goddamn thing unless your husband does so first._

She does leave, she packs their bags in the middle of the day – panicking, panicking, panicking – and Ed finds her and Sophia two days later.  Being the sole focus of her husband’s attention is no longer a heady experience, it’s downright terrifying, and all her avenues of help seemed to have lurched and left.  Carol convinces herself it’s manageable, that she’ll survive, as long as Ed doesn’t hit Sophia.  Sophia is the golden rule – the one person whose safety Carol values more than her own – and for once in his life, Ed never crosses the boundary.  He never hits their child – (he would have, when Sophia was older, when she was closer to her teenage years, hair flowing like Rapunzel – but that fairytale never comes to pass).

If Shane had listened to Carol’s story, he would have stared at her, eyes agate and swimming in blackness.  He might have said: 

_You’re not worth our time, cruel as it may sound.  There’s a woman beaten on by her husband on US soil once every fifteen seconds, did y’all know that?  And they’re the **reported** cases.  Any idea how many times the police are called out to handle a domestic dispute?   The truth is, the only ones worth looking out for are the ones who help themselves, who have the courage to leave straight away, **they’re** the ones you help, **they’re** the ones you check in on because otherwise you burn out quicker than a guttering spark.  Pressing charges, dropping charges, given those assholes a second chance?   That’s bullshit.  If a dog bites, you put it down.  The moment you decide to forget and go back, only to be bit again?  Well, shit lady, you lost my sympathy.  There’s someone else I could be helping, who might need it more, and hopefully, that person has sense enough to leave._

_That’s your excuse?  You're afraid of burning out so you don't help?  You think that makes it alright?_

_No, no I don’t.  But it’s no worse than your shitty excuse._

Excuses, she thinks, are all people are in the end.  A series of excuses and history that makes up the skeleton of our true selves, a bedrock of calcified bone.  Education – someone taking the time,  having the _patience_ to teach otherwise – could be the muscle, stronger each time it’s flexed, each time it falls, overcoming hurdles and growing because of it.  Hope is the fragile skin that lies on top, enshrouding it all - sometimes picture perfect, unblemished - and other times ready to be torn.

There are as many different sides to a story as there are people, and Carol has met a thousand Shane’s.  She met very few Rick’s in her lifetime though. 

When it becomes apparent Officer Grimes has changed, shut down tight, when it becomes obvious he’d never raise a fist against his own people _despite_ all of that, hell-bent on keeping them alive, Carol wonders what would have been said - if it were Rick Grimes who rotated through her front door in uniform all those years ago – if the horror of her fairytale life might have spun out on a different course?

 

 

 

 

AND THAT SLOW, STEADY CREEP.

 

 

Daryl surprises her. 

Andrea, Amy, Beth, Maggie, Lori, Carol, Michonne, Jacqui – there has been no shortage of women in their group at one stage or another - and zero interest from Daryl Dixon.  Not a whit. 

Not once in how many years?

Daryl’s not hard on the eyes, in fact, he’s decidedly easy, and when Daryl talked about Randall, about how the prisoner bragged about the gang-rape of two teenage girls, Carol thinks it might have been Randall testing the waters, trying to appeal to him – that he looked at Daryl’s composure, his speech, the way he held himself – and thought he was the same ilk as the rest of Randall’s gang.  Played it safe, too.  _See, this is what my people do, you’d fit right in – but you know – personally **I’m** not into that…just in case you’re not into it as well.  How do you feel about this fun-fact story_?

Daryl – who’s actually smarter than people first assume – had seen right through the ploy.  As an answer, he’d beaten Randall to a bloody pulp - not only for bragging about the rape - but also for the assumption Daryl would get a hard-on from hearing about it, that some small part of Randall thought he might have found it appealing. 

Daryl surprises Carol, and continues to surprise her.  He’s skittish about touch – flinches when people reach out too quickly – blinking hard and fast as if to clear his vision, and he freezes on the spot like a startled hare if Carol so much as teases him about sex…which surprises her at first and then flat-out delights her.

Finding ways to tease Daryl Dixon, in fact, becomes her number one priority.

Rick was spoken for, Shane loved Lori, Glenn wasted no time with Maggie, and Carl stared at Beth with longing when he thought no one was looking.  Hershel, the one time Carol asked, had shrugged and said he never got over his wife to be honest.  Daryl is the only man in camp, as far as she can tell, who’s just not interested in sex, who shies away from it, and so Carol feels safe with him, in ways she’s never felt safe with anyone. 

He might be the first man Carol’s met who doesn’t _want_ anything, who doesn’t care if she fails to dye her hair or crops it short, he looks at Carol as if he’s curious, tentative to know her, who she is.  They both carry their own damage, she’s come to realise, and Carol was the first person in camp Daryl actually reached out for. 

Carol would be speaking the truth if she confessed to love him.   She thinks, to some degree, everybody in camp is a little bit in love with each other.  That none of them would hesitate to lay down their lives to protect one another.  She loves Daryl with every fibre in her being

And she knows instinctively that Rick does, too.  So she clutches to their leader when he steps out of the car, his movements slow, like he's an old man. 

It’s Rick who folds her into a hug; face ashen when Carol mouths _Gone_? It’s Rick who smells like desperation, eyes feverish as he assures her _Not dead.  He’s with his brother._ Not dead, Carol thinks, thank god he’s not dead.  Rick’s fingers have curled into claws.  He smells sour and he’s shaking bodily, small tremors that rumble through them both.  Carol falls into him, fingers on Rick’s spine, the small of his back, the cut of his hip, so far in sync with each other that Carol doesn’t know who is comforting whom.  She wouldn’t have tolerated Rick’s touch when they first met, but she trusts him now, implicitly.  They're tangled up together in a shocked grief.

Once upon a time Carol might have said:  _Is this the truth?  Or are you **lying** to us like you did before?_

 _(_ And Daryl will gasp, snarling as she digs around for the bullet in his leg, voice pained.  "You done this before?"

"Course I have," she'll bluff. "Didn’t I tell you about my first aid studies?  Best tutelage, finest teachers I ever did learn from.  Now shut-up and let me concentrate.")

Once upon a time Carol might have said _Why don’t you **do** something_ , while blind to her own complicit stillness.

(she drives a blank of wood through the head of a zombie.  Carol asks Maggie to teach her how to fire a gun – the girl was raised on a farm, her aim spot on and Carol had missed out on those early lessons with Shane – Maggie shrugs and says, Why not?  Carol’s not a crack-shot and she never will be but she learns everything she can from Maggie – Rick handing out the bullets one at a time - and then she turns toward Hershel.  Carol will hunt down medical books, first aid pamphlets to consolidate her knowledge.  On the wire, she’ll select and kill walkers carefully, crouched in the dirt like a grave-robber, working out the finer points of human anatomy.  Stillness is something Carol left behind a long time ago, and she won't risk Lori, Daryl, Rick, or anyone else due to ignorance.)

Once upon a time Carol might have said:  _I don’t trust him_

(Rick looks at them, one at a time, committing their faces to memory.  “I didn’t keep you alive all winter.  We kept each _other_ alive.  And I can’t hand over one of us, because _we_ are the greater good.  Not me.  I can’t be your Governor, I can't make this decision alone, because we’re in this together.  You need to make your own choices - we stay and we fight or we go - but either way, we stick together.”)

She’ll find Rick standing on the watchtower, the rifle cradled in the crook of his arm.  “We’re with you,” Carol says evenly.  “We’ll stand and we'll fight.” 

She braces her forearms against the railing, looks out over the prison yard, the trees a dark line in the distance.  Rick will nod and turn to look at Carol side on.  “Sounds about right…”  She can remember how tightly Rick held her, leaning against each other in the prison yard, muscle and bone laced together, the skin flayed straight off them both, reeling with the loss of it.  Absently, he says: “Daryl should be back soon.”

She reaches out and takes Rick's hand.  “I know.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
